Podcast Transcript
The Health Detective Podcast Part 2
Tue, Jan 09, 2024 2:30PM • 1:06:03
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
mold, air, air purifiers, moisture, mattresses, jason, work, mold growth, clean, problem, building, people, renting, dampness, health, implied warranty, landlord, high humidity, house, love
SPEAKERS
Jason Earle
Jason Earle 00:00
And then the data says that you are exposed to outdoor air pollution four times as much indoors as you are if you’re walking outside and so it’s more concentrated. So So what that means is that you need to implement mechanical interventions into your indoor environment, especially specifically HEPA filters. And what they call OPA filters, which is like the next level up from HEPA HEPA stands for High Efficiency Particulate resins which is 99 and three quarters percent effective and, and then OPA is a notch up from that and that takes up particles standpoint, one micron so like atmospheric dust
00:48
Hello, and welcome to the health tech podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. We bring you interviews from people who have conquered the trickiest of health challenges using the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition philosophy and similar healing modalities. You’re going to hear from experts who have been through the wringer with their health issues and yet managed to come out on the other side. If you’re interested in natural healing and or functional medicine, congrats, you’re in the right place. You can always visit us at Functional Diagnostic nutrition.com.
But for now, Here is today’s episode. Alright, hello, my friends and welcome back to another episode of the health detective podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan transou, aka detective F, and I will be your host for today’s show. I believe we’re on episode number 297 here with Jason Earle. We brought him back for a part two. You guys love this the first time and we’re really going to go into some different stuff. This time for part two. So I’ll read his background and then I’ll explain what we’re going to be focusing on today.
In case you maybe didn’t hear this last time his first episode, this is not something where you would have to go back in time and listen to the first episode to understand this. In fact, I would stay with us today enjoy this episode and then you can head back there because that was a good one. He basically put on a masterclass on mold. It was an excellent episode. So here we go. Jason Earle is a man on a mission and adoring father of two boys and diapers, incurable entrepreneur and indoor air quality Crusader, He is founder and CEO of God mold and the creator of the god Mold Test came.
The realization that is moldy childhood home was the underlying cause of his extreme allergies and asthma led him into the healthy home business in 2002. Leaving behind a successful career on Wall Street. I actually looked you up, by the way, because I remember last time you had referenced you were one of the youngest traders of all time and he does come up for that. So that was true. pretty damn cool. Over the last two decades, Jason has personally performed countless sick building investigations, solving many medical mysteries along the way, helping 1000s of families recover their health and peace of mind.
He has been featured or appeared on Good Morning America Extreme Makeover Home Edition, very appropriate, as I mentioned last time, entrepreneur, wired and more. Jason, welcome back to the show. Good to be here. Cool. All right. So he’s also going to be I’m thinking you got connected with Ben Azadi, right, you’re gonna be doing that show eventually did alright, so if you guys don’t know, Ben Azadi, he’s an FDN. Amazing podcast, keto can podcast definitely check that out, too. And Jason will be doing some stuff there. So for this particular episode, last time, we covered his story covered the GOP mold thing. And this is going to intertwine into what we’re talking about today. But we wanted to stay focused on two main topics.
One is how this mold aspect and really just the air quality aspect of people’s health is a foundational thing, this is something that should be being looked at. In our intake forms, it should be something that’s being looked at within the first conversations of dealing with someone and I am biased now and definitely towards this because of what I experienced recently. And then number two, we’re going to transition a little bit into the legality behind this and your rights. There are so many people out there that are renting, especially in today’s world, right?
It’s a lot of people having trouble saving up to maybe buy their first home. And then let’s say you find frickin mold in the apartment or in the house that you’re renting. What do you do? What are the rights for that? You’d be surprised just how many you have as a renter, so we’ll talk about that as well. But Jason, let’s dive into how we can approach this from a foundational perspective. When we’re dealing with clients or people in general, and FDN. We always have our foundational stuff under the dress acronym.
We look at it as diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction and supplementation. And this could fall under a couple categories, certainly the stress reduction side because it is a huge stressor on the body. And the reason that I said I am biased now towards fully supporting this is a foundational thing is because if someone is doing all the FDM stuff, and they’ve done it for a while and they’ve done it very damn well, then you would think that if mold wasn’t a foundational thing, it would have very little effect on one’s health. And that hasn’t been my lived experience.
Recently. For those that didn’t hear the other show. I was in an apartment that was actually super nice. And I think that’s another thing that is probably a topic for a different day, right. Just because you live in a nice place or a decent place does not mean that you can’t have mold, mold can be anywhere. And so we moved into this apartment that we were paying way too much for. And within a few months, I started getting these odd injuries. And then another few months, I started getting crazy sinus stuff. And it got so bad to the point that I was waking up in the middle of the night gasping because my nose was so clogged, I wasn’t breathing through it. So I’d be like, choking for air and waking up my fiance scaring the hell out of Maddie.
And so now I believe that this is totally a foundational thing, because I’ve been doing the FDN stuff for seven years, generally speaking, I feel amazing. And it still got me. So I know it’s a long winded spiel. I know, that’s a lot of prefacing. But I’m curious from your perspective, as someone who’s seen the effects of this firsthand. And, and, you know, FDN, right, you’ve talked to read before, you’ve talked to me now, how do you see this fitting in as a foundational piece of our work as FDN? Practitioners?
Jason Earle 06:06
Well, first of all, thanks for the the generous introduction, and thanks for having me back. It’s a pleasure to be here. Well, you know, in terms of the dress acronym, I think you could you could look at, believe it or not eras as part of a dietary intake, you know, we don’t breed so much as we consume our air. And, you know, that’s it takes a little bit of, you know, it’s it’s sort of a shift in perspective. But when we’re breathing, you could argue that, you know, we’re filtering to some degree, the air that we’re bringing in, we’re consuming the oxygen, and then we’re expelling, the carbon dioxide is waste. And along the way, we’re also picking up all of the or many of the pollutants that are carried in that air. So we’re consuming air. And we do this at the rate of if you’re, if anyone heard our first show 13 to 15 times a minute, which comes out to 20,000 times a day.
And so you know, that’s look at, if you look at this as 20,000 doses, it’s hard to imagine that you’re going to be able to do anything in terms of nourishing with three meals a day, or a handful of supplements to counteract the effects of, of what what I would argue is also a stress, it’s a repetitive stress, if you’re, if you’re doing this, and you’re doing it in an environment where the air quality isn’t pristine. And so, you know, the the, the reality is, is that there is no such thing as neutral air, you either have healthy, nutritious air, air, and oxygen is a nutrient. You know, it’s something that that’s obviously it’s fundamental to health, but it is detoxifying, it’s energizing, it’s a fuel, right, it’s flail was, this is literally the stuff that makes life and so on the on the other side, where we have unhealthy air, this is, you know, this is toxifying.
And it’s going to drain you of your vital energy and lead to disease and, and premature death. And there is no neutral, there is no neutral, right? So you’re eating either breathing nutritive life giving air or your or you’re you’re accelerating your own demise. And it’s really that binary. I know it sounds heavy handed when I say it that way. So you could argue that air quality is a foundational element of health actually hits two out of the out of the two of two of the letters within the dress acronym. Sure.
08:34
And then I guess the next question is, and none of the stuff that we ever say on the show guys is ever to overwhelm people, right? We deal with a certain reality, it’s kind of a crazy one. In today’s world, we are doing many things wrong, we are poisoning our water, we’re poisoning our air poisoning our food. Um, so you can get very neurotic about this very easily. Once you know this stuff. That’s not the that’s not the goal. The idea is always to remember the human body’s incredibly resilient otherwise, we couldn’t even do a podcast like this, we wouldn’t have gotten this far.
What we want to do is educate ourselves and act on what we can act on in the way that’s necessary and and the best that we can. And then we go from there. So with that said, what I was kind of getting at is, If I lived in a city right now, I mean, forget the mold thing for a second when there are temperature differences in cities compared to the surrounding suburbs often, because there’s so much damn pollution and other stuff going on, that it’s actually affecting, you know, the environment that bad. I mean, that’s kind of a crazy thing.
Obviously, it’s affecting us as humans. So the question is, you know, mold or not, and it can be either, where do we start that because there’s no reality really, in today’s world, other than I want to say if you lived super remote, but I would assume that we’re still even affecting those areas of the world. We are getting stuff today that our ancestors never dealt with in the air. So where can we ever start? Where can we actually start to look at like, let’s make sure I’m not getting some of the big hitters. And an analogy for this. I guess just to make this clear of what my question is.
I can go eat organic food. But the fact of the matter is they can use these organic pesticides and other things that hey, I’m at least way better off than the conventionally grown fast food crap. That’s really not food at all. Ideal, no way better than what I have been doing as probably a lay human in today’s world. Yes. So what are the big heavy hitters? And how do we check for them if we’re working with a client? Well,
Jason Earle 10:23
so backing up to what you were the way you started this also, I love how you said, there’s a lot here and it can make you neurotic and it can be overwhelming. And, you know, there’s certainly a lot that would cause people to possibly, you know, send up, you know, send their hackles up, or be concerned. And I do think that it is worthy of concern. But there’s a difference between being fearful and being discerning. And, you know, so in other words, well, let me say, let me say it differently. The way I look at general health is it’s about air, food and attitude. And you get your air straight, which will, which we’re obviously talking about, get your diet straight, which has a lot to do, by the way, mycotoxins and food is a big issue, but also pesticides, and everything else.
So food is something that’s very well addressed, I think, within within the FDA community. But then attitude is a really important one, I’ve never seen anybody get better. That was that was afraid of mold. Because it’s such a fundamental part of our of our world, it’s like being afraid of, you know, sunlight or gravity. It’s just, it’s so it’s so basic. And I understand that it causes so much disruption. And I’m saying this, being someone who went through this and helps people go through this, and I understand why people experienced this kind of fear.
But that but that doesn’t lend itself to healing, you know, there’s a certain degree of accepting the fact that this is part of our part of our world, and then learning how to be discerning about the decisions you make, so that you can successfully navigate around it, though, the analogy I use is, you know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t make sense to be afraid of the traffic light up ahead, right, you’re gonna make a left turn or right turn or you’re gonna go straight, and you have to be aware of that traffic light, otherwise, you’re going to potentially get into an accident, right? But to be fearful of that traffic light is counterproductive, right, you’re gonna have to make a decision. Either way, you’re gonna have to make it himself for a variety of decisions as you approach that light. But but but being fearful of it doesn’t help you get to where you’re going to go.
And so getting to the point where you accept that, you know, traffic lights are a part of our of our transportation system is same as understand that mold is a part of our world. And so being aware of how it works, and how it affects you, is, is one way to get past the fear of it. And then understanding how to avoid it. And then how to respond to and in a pragmatic way is also because there’s a lot of confusion out there, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of misinformation, and this is the biggest problem. If you go to google or Go to Facebook, and start looking up, you know, start start asking questions about mold, boy, you’re gonna get a lot of lot of stuff being sold to you that may or may not be useful, most of it will not be useful.
And, and you’re gonna hear a lot of fear from people that have had a hard time overcoming it, those tend to be the loudest voices, and they’re not necessarily representative of the of the mass, and they certainly don’t represent the people who have successfully navigated this and overcome it, because those people don’t have much to say, right, they’re moving on with their life. You know, so, the, the way I look at air quality as a, as a fundamental, I always go back to air, water, food and shelter and sunlight. Right, these are the, these are the, these are the basic, foundational elements of health. And, and so everything that you do, to to, to optimize your health is built on those things. Right? Everybody wants to feel better, think better, be more beautiful, be younger, you know, they all they all want to optimize, but until we get the basic stuff straight, there’s there’s really not much to do.
And so when it comes to the big ones when it comes to air quality, listen, there’s the outdoor air pollution is a big deal. And you know, quite frankly, to answer your your big question, you know, outdoor air pollution actually affects us indoors too. You know, the this the data on this is pretty stunning it because of the fact that when you when you run an exhaust vent in your house, like a dryer vent or a bathroom exhaust fan, or a kitchen exhaust fan, every cubic foot of air that leaves your house has to be replaced by a cubic foot of air that comes back in from outside. Right, these boxes are are static in the sense that there’s a fixed volume of air in every building that we live or work in, right. The walls don’t bend in when the when the air goes out, right.
So air has to come in for air to leave. And so when that happens if the outdoor air if you live in a polluted area, by the way, there’s pollution in almost every area, right. But if you live in a polluted area, that means the air is infiltrating in an accidental way, right? It’s not coming in through a filter it’s not coming in, in most cases, there’s something that’s going to reduce pollutants. And so what happens is it over time, outdoor air pollution gets into your building.
And then the data says that you are exposed to outdoor air pollution, four times as much indoors as you are if you’re walking outside, and so it’s more concentrated. So what that means is that you need to implement mechanical interventions into your indoor environment, especially specifically HEPA filters. And what they call OPA filters, which is like the next level up from HEPA. HEPA stands for high efficiency, particulate resins, which is 99, and three quarters percent effective. And, and then all bias is a notch up from that. And that takes up particles down to a point one micron. So like atmospheric dust, even virus, things like that.
And so when you see companies like Nike, where they have hyper HEPA and you see if you go with air doctors version of that is, but those are those, those, those pores are much smaller in the in the HEPA, that you in our modern environment. In our in our modern world, having a really high quality air purifiers throughout your house, I think are I think it’s fundamental. I think it’s I think they’re required appliances in every home as sort of like a starting point.
16:28
Did we even talk about last time I remembered some of these things. I love the well, I don’t love it, but I appreciate you sharing that, that the indoor air ends up becoming more toxic, right? Like we think, Oh, close, the windows are protected from the outside. It’s like, Well, where did the air go from? It’s not growing in your house, unless you have a forest going on in here. You had to come out or come in some way. And then you’re kind of just recirculating it. So really interesting point there. But do we even get to talk about what air filters you recommend? Because it’s not like you’re selling any from my understanding. So I’m curious what someone like you is interested in or using in your own home?
Jason Earle 17:02
Well, I’ve got as you might imagine, a wide variety of them, we got a lot of throughout our house, I’m a big fan of mattify air, they make a lot of, they make a wide variety of units. But what’s nice about metaphor is that they have some very, very affordable ones. They have ones there as as as as little as $100. So really useful. For apartments and, and first, small rooms. In the middle of the range, I tend to like air doctor, we’ve got some some some nice units that are in the, you know, four or $500 range. I used to recommend IQ air a lot, but there are a variety of reasons why I kind of steer away from it, where the company made some changes, and they kind of they built their business on a distributor network.
And then and then when they were unceremoniously like fired all their distributors DTC, which is, you know, not not a great way to do things, but they still make really great air purifiers. So if anybody’s got IQ air units, or if you if you find that that’s within your budget, those are fabulous as well. And what’s nice about them is they’ve got a lot of carbon in them. So IQ air is great air doctors great Jasper is one of my favorites in the on the higher end of things. And what’s nice about the Jasper units is that they’ve got a nice voc sensor, so VOCs or volatile organic compounds and these are the gases that that are emanated from building materials, cleaning products, personal care products, and microbes. The musty smell and the microbial smell or the musty smell is comprised of VOCs also. And so the Jasper unit has a nice voc sensor in it.
And so it will it will actually rev itself up to meet the demands caused by the pollutant and it also has I mean I have one of my kitchen I love this thing. It also has a particle counter. So if I’m if I’m out at the grill, which is all the way across my kitchen, and we’ve got a little Porsche and it detects even the slightest bit of smoke that infiltrates and ramps right up if I’m cooking bacon you know the my my exhaust fan is lousy in my kitchen so here I am an indoor air quality guy with a lousy exhaust fan which just shows that the cobbler son has issues right but but but but but I’ve got an air purifier in close proximity to to knock that stuff down.
And so Jasper is Jay ASPR and they’re beautiful units and and I’m a huge fan. It’s an up and coming company and I’m glad to support them. But no we don’t sell air purifiers but I do recommend them across the board. Now I see triad air, is that a good filter? So that’s a really good question. triad air is not a filter. triad air is a it’s an ionizer and it also generates ozone. There is there are applications for ozone and for ionization in indoor air quality improvement, but not as a standard not as a 24/7 365 kind of thing. Both ionization and ozone can lead to other problems if they’re overused. Ozone is especially useful for reducing things like odors.
And it’s it’s used to sanitize as well. And we really don’t want to sanitize our buildings, we really want to help the microbiome. So the three enemies of healthy indoor air just a quick aside our dampness, which of course leads the mold growth and proliferation of other allergens like dust mites, and also invites other other critters, you know, the insects and rodents and things. So dampness is the number one enemy of healthy indoor air, it’s the number one enemy of the building. The second one is chemicals, which is you know, we’re we slather our walls with chemicals, we everything we do is chemicals. And so but that’s that’s a major problem because we’re tight. And we are in these super tight buildings, and we’re breathing 20,000 times a day.
And it’s probably the underlying cause of much of the autoimmune and cancer and things like that, that we’re experiencing is such, you know, in such high numbers these days. And then the third thing that’s an enemy of healthy indoor air is actually hyper sanitisation killing all the microbes. You know, the the data on this is very strong that a high microbial diversity, meaning lots of different microbes in your building actually leads to lower cases of asthma, allergies and autoimmune disease, and I only talk on the last show. And the same as the opposite is true where you know, a high micro a low microbial diversity leads to much higher cases of asthma, allergies, and autoimmune disease. So when it comes to air purifiers, you really don’t want to do things that are sanitizing, and even with the units that I talked about, which are filters.
And by the way, I know the guys that try it here, and I think that they’ve got they’re very well intended. And I think they actually have a good product, I think it’s not something that you want to run 24 hours a day, because you’ll cause harm. But it does have there are limited applications for it, especially in areas, especially in places where you have peed someone with a compromised immune system, that’s actually much more useful. That’s one of the one of the few instances where you might want to use this and greater and more often.
But the but the thing about using all of these things, or any of the filters any of these air units is you want to you want to get your get mostly and by the way that filters are actually really helpful to remove the little tiny chemical bits that come from the paints and finishes off of your of your flooring and things like that. That’s deeply respirable. And it’s also it’s also really nasty stuff. So we want to get rid of the particles in our air, and we want to get rid of the VOCs and things like that.
And then occasionally you want to open your windows and bring nature back in, right, because we don’t want to really get we don’t want to sanitize this to the point where we’re not having any exposure to nature in our buildings. Because what happens is, if you don’t use it, you lose it, your immune system stops recognizing these things. And then when you actually do have an exposure of any significance, you have a disproportionate reaction to it. So
22:46
many things, you’re one with the window thing I think as winter is approaching, for many of us listening, not all of us, you know, it can be harder and harder to justify and do. I always do it when I’m in the car. And we never talked about this last time. Jason, one of my if your favorite topic is probably bold in the health space, I’m assuming I love light. And I love studying artificial light and the natural light and what it does for us. And so one of the things that I adopted several years back and people look at me like I’m ridiculous, I don’t care if it’s 20 degrees, I cracked the windows in my car, and I just turned the damn heat up.
He compared to air conditioning, especially in a car is not going to, you know, raise your fuel cost that much like you’re you’re barely touching anything, their air conditioning is different. And so when I do that, just so the natural light gets and unfiltered. But there’s also this added benefit of the airside. And so one of the cool things that now I do is I don’t care if it doesn’t have to be a beautiful car. But if I have the sunroof, that’s what I want, like, I gotta have something that I can open up and get the light in. And it makes it much more manageable from the heat perspective. For those that are saying they’re too cold. With the house, you just do it every now and then it’s like 30 freakin degrees here today. It’s super windy, I do what I can. And I especially um, I try to use some type of weighted blanket or something when I’m sleeping.
And I actually sleep very close to the window. Thankfully, I live in a place where there’s zero light pollution coming from the back. I know this is not practical for everyone, especially, you don’t wanna be getting artificial blue light from a street lamp and your face all night. That’s not going to be useful. But I sleep near the window and I leave it cracked. There’s so many benefits to this right not only the airside but I’m lowering my body temperature, which we know is good for sleep. There’s a million different things here. So I liked that you brought that up. We were talking overall about how this can be, you know, kind of a foundational thing.
And there’s one thing that I want people to understand and even myself because you might have a different opinion on this than mine currently is based on the information that I’ve received previously. A lot of people could say, okay, cool. The first thing I’m going to go do that now that I heard this today is buy an air filter for the apartment or for the house or whatever it might be, if someone is truly dealing with mold in their environment is an air filter or an air purifier rather ever going to be enough for something like that.
So for example, my fiance and I discovered a black mold growing in our H vac system so it was coming directly out of the air conditioner, it’s sitting in the vents. And every time that got turned on, it’s blowing the stuff into the air. Certainly an air purifier is going to be better. But there’s people that really don’t know this, is that ever going to be enough? Or do you need to remediate or remove yourself from the situation?
Jason Earle 25:15
Well, that’s a very good question. When it comes to an air quality issue of any sort, there’s only three things you can do. One is source removal, which is essentially remediation. And that’s not always possible or practical, for a variety of reasons, financial reasons, sometimes it’s just a timing thing. And so you know, that it’s sometimes you don’t have control of the property, like in the case where you’re renting. And so that’s a major issue. The so, so source control is ideal, but not always possible. The second thing you can do is dilute, which is bringing in fresh air from outside. Now that can be done by opening windows, which of course you can’t do if it’s too hot, too cold or too humid. And or for any length of time.
Or if you’ve code of course, if you’re concerned about you know, if you’re on the first floor, you know, it’s not always a great idea for security reasons. But but getting fresh air indoors is a really good idea. Listen, Florence Nightingale figured that out, right, she was she she said, you know, you gotta open the windows, and you gotta let light and light let the air in and seriously, and she was able to transform health. I mean, she was the she was the first person to say get, you know, get some fresh air in here. And, and so you know, concept much better. You know, it was it was it was transformative. And so you know, dilution has its value.
And there are, by the way, there are mechanical systems called E RVs. And HRVs, which allow you to bring extinct spelled stale air and bring in fresh air in a way that uses a heat exchanger. So you’re not just blowing out air conditioned air that you’ve invested money in, or we’re heated air. And so that’s a really useful tool for homes. Installing air exchange systems can also be very helpful for buildings, voc problems, which is very common, because we build buildings that way. That’s kind of the default setting. And then the third thing you can do is you can filter the air.
So that, you know, obviously putting in HEPA filters and especially with carbon, this is this is very important. The thing is that the only true solution and the only long term thing is really source control, dilution is helpful to buy you time. But it’s it’s sort of a second, it’s a distant second to filtration, because you can do that with your windows closed. And so we can you the main thing about air filtration, I think it’s a basic thing you have to do anyway, because of our modern world. But it is not a substitute for actually getting things remediated, you have to look at it as a as something that is a stepping stone or something that will buy you time, it can often overcome this in a significant manner, it can, you know, sort of deal with 90% of a small mold problem in terms of exposure.
But for those of us who are sensitive to these things, they’re you know, the body has an amazing, exquisite integrated array of precision sensors, and it will know that it’s there. And you will not do well. While that is sitting there, it’s gonna be like the pee under your mattress like the Princess and the Pea. It’ll be that thing that’s constantly bothering your immune system. And so I highly recommend that people use them as a tool to get you to where you’re going, but not as a substitute for actual source control and remediation.
28:17
Okay, and I’ve experienced this firsthand, I did not splurge to get a super high level air filter. So fair enough. But one thing that was crazy to me, I could not believe I was still experiencing the symptoms with this is when we were at the apartment we had, we had two bedrooms. One was used as an office, though, but the office was where I had all the lighting. And the windows were massive because I wanted the bedroom dark for sleep. And I wanted the office light for when I’m doing my podcasting, Zoom calls or whatever it might be.
So we move an air mattress into the office room to stay away from the mattress to just in case it was that was the source the mold, we had no idea at this point. And we’re sleeping on the air mattress right next to the windows with it open. And I’m still having the issue of like waking up and and experiencing these things. So I’m not sure if that’s because I was in it most of the day without the windows like too widely open because we lived in an apartment complex. There’s noises outside and stuff. I don’t know why but it was like when I switched the environment. That’s when I immediately felt better. And thankfully, I’ve made a lot of progress over these last basically month and a half, two months since we’ve been out. Some of the Vertigo is dying down. The dizziness is getting a lot better. So I’m excited to hear that. All right. We’ll see where that goes not hear that?
Oh, one thing I have just a selfish question. But I think a lot of people were wondering this one and then we’ll move into this legality side. And by the way, we got 33 People with us live today, especially since this is a part two, a feel free to ask any questions as we go along here for Jason. I’d be happy to prioritize some of them. The shower question, my vice. My dirty habit is that I love showers. And the worst thing is we’re back at my parents temporarily, but my parents have an infinity water heater. That is my time man. I come up with my best ideas.
I’ll be reading on my frickin Kindle on my phone in the shower. I’m ridiculous. And of course, that builds a lot of steam. There’s dampness and I’ve already noticed. Okay, do I want to create the exact same problem here that I just had at the apartment? So again, funny question selfish. But is there an additional thing that you can do to control the dampness in a bathroom because the fan is not working for this, I’ve cracked the window to let some steam out that’s not working. But are there any things out there that would actually work to control that?
Jason Earle 30:28
I’m, it sounds like your bathroom exhaust fan isn’t working, okay, or it’s or it’s undersized. And by the way, a lot of those bathroom exhaust fans actually vent like into the ceiling, or into an attic, or, you know, they need to go outside. And so you know, one of the things that I that I use smoke tubes and stuff professionally, but you know, it works really well is a piece of toilet paper, you just hold it up to the fan. And if it doesn’t hold that, if it doesn’t hold the paper up against the grill up against the great, then it’s probably not working sufficiently.
And you could do something you light a match and see if the smoke goes right out, it really has to, and you should be able to track and see go to the outside of the building and see where that exhaust vent goes. And building management should be able to show you as well, right, that’s an that’s a, that’s a fundamentally crucial part of a healthy building. Kitchen exhaust fans bathroom exhaust fans in particular. And what’s funny is that they often put them over the toilet. These are not fart fans, these are for moisture. You know, they’re designed to reduce the they’re not they’re not there for odors. They’re there for for humidity.
And so no, I mean, the bottom line is, but you know, as a tangential point, this is a really important one is that people often ask us about mold on the grout, mold on the ground and the caulk in their shower. And ask whether or not this is something that they need to be concerned of, you know, concerned about. And the reality is that you’ve got a lot of a lot of mold growing on on your tiles and stuff, you probably just need that’s kind of a hygiene thing more than anything else. But it also sometimes means that you’ve got too much latent moisture. So a squeegee is useful get that moisture down into the drain.
But what’s more important than the mold growing on grout or caulk, because that’s actually really not a health hazard for for the vast majority of people. The bigger concern would be missing grout or caulk, okay, because when you have little gaps in in these in the seals around tiles, and especially when the tile and the tub meet, which is called a cove. So where these two surfaces meet on a perpendicular plane. And this also occurs at the base of the tub where the tile floor meets right, these areas, you want to look really be very careful about not allowing grout and caulk to fall apart there. You want to make sure that’s always fresh because water gets in the drip, drip, drip, drip drip, once water gets in, it does not dry.
Water gets behind the walls, behind tile walls very, very easily when there’s missing grout and caulk. And you won’t know you won’t know until the tiles are falling off. And if and oftentimes there’s a bedroom right on the other side of that with your head right against that wall. Sure. So a lot of the really significant mold exposures that I’ve seen, actually came from these very small, almost imperceptible leaks around tiles around around bathroom surrounds, shower, shower and tub surrounds. And then and then they impact that wall between the bedroom and the bathroom. And so it’s something to be very, very aware of. Okay,
33:48
great. I’ll do the paper. The toilet paper track that sounds actually really good because I I have been kind of concerned I’m like, you know, I grew up in this house. So building management’s my dad, by the way, so I’ll ask him about the vents and see see what’s going where here. You know, at the very least even if we’re not going to be here forever. Um, the last thing I want to do is leave my parents with this. Once I’m gone I can I can change the showers pretty easily, I think but it doesn’t make sense. I’m like the fan should be working regardless.
And it’s like afterwards sometimes like holy cow, the the rooms like filled with dampness. And again, I don’t want to walk into the same problem. Thankfully, I feel good right now. Everything’s fine here. But yeah, we’d like to prevent the problem. And I’m sure there’s other shower lovers out there that were wondering, we do have some questions from the audience. I think it’d be really cool to go to go to them if you don’t mind. Let’s do it. Next we have someone asked, Do you need to move out if there is black mold in the house? Well,
Jason Earle 34:39
it depends if you’re experiencing symptoms. And and, and especially during remediation, it’s often useful to move out to give the especially if the test results show that that it’s impacted areas that that are primary living spaces that you’re going to need to due to not be in during the cleanup, that’s absolutely crucial.
But the most important thing about finding if you’ve got black mold in the house, the most important thing, any mold, okay, so black mold is kind of a kind of a misnomer. There’s no such thing as good mold growth of any significance in your house unless it’s growing in the brain in your fridge. Right? You know, this is, the bottom line is that, that if you’ve got any sort of mold growth of significance in your house, you have a moisture problem. And it doesn’t matter where mold is green, blue, black or purple. It’s, it’s, it’s a chemical factory. And recent animal studies have shown that, that, that the musty smell is neurotoxic. And all molds produce the musty smell. So we’re not just worried about toxigenic species anymore. We’re worried about any mold growth of significance. So so no, you don’t have to leave the house.
Because you’ve got mold growth, what you do need to do is get to the bottom of the moisture problem, figure out what’s causing the moisture. And sometimes it’s more than one thing, you need to fix that immediately. And then determine the extent of the mold problem. And that often requires some degree of testing. And, and or a professional inspection, which often involves some degree of testing. And then depending upon how significant that is, you may need to relocate. Now, you know, we could that this could dovetail into the conversation about renting when we get there, about you know how you handle that.
Because in some cases where you’re renting, it does make sense to move, you’ve got that flexibility, when you own a home, it’s not necessarily as easy to do, because what are you gonna do you’re gonna sell to someone else? Are you gonna move out and just pay the mortgage? So every situation is different? It depends. But in all cases, if you’re experiencing symptoms that are that are there, if you’re experiencing medical concerns that you should obviously seek medical help. And And if these persist, and you’re unable to reduce exposure through things like air purifiers and sleeping in different rooms, then then it’s often a good idea to relocate. Yeah,
37:07
that’s a great point. I mean, obviously, I promised the people today that we were talking about the legality side, if you don’t mind, we’ll do these other the two questions that are on right now. So Tanya, and Nicole will answer you guys, feel free to ask more questions, and then we’ll get to them after we cover. So two questions, the legality side? And then the other questions if they come up? The other one is, what is the difference between black and white mold? Other than the color? Of course, what would be the difference here?
Jason Earle 37:30
Well, so the white mold question comes up a lot. And it really, oftentimes what people think is white mold, especially if it’s on a on a concrete block wall or, or cement wall is not actually mold, it’s actually mineral salts that come out, it is indicated indicative of moisture on the other side of the wall. And so you should fix that.
And that usually means your gutters germinating too close to the foundation, or you’ve got some ponding or puddling, out in your, in your yard, right next to that wall. So that needs to be addressed. Because that actually that moisture that’s in that concrete actually evaporates into the space, and it contributes to higher humidity. So so it’s not mold, per se, but it can contribute to to to humidity issue, which of course, is the underlying cause of a lot of mold, then then the answer is yes. Now there are also types of fungi that are white, and usually they are actually rot fungi.
So not molds per se. They’re actually forms of mushrooms. And they’re, and they are sort of later stage than mold. Mold is kind of the they’re kind of like the first guys stripped to the party. And the rot fungus is later stage. There’s also sort of light colored, they can be they under the microscope, they can almost appear colorless, but they’re white or yellowish. And so those are also common dominant outdoor type molds, Aspergillus and Penicillium types. And so these are, these are very common molds.
But the to back to my previous answer, there’s no such thing as good mold growth of any significance in your building, if you whether you’ve got black mold, white mold, whether it’s a wood rot, or whether it’s sort of one of these early colonizers, which means like the first molds the show up and there’s water damage issue. They are all to be looked at as warning signs. And not again, not to be afraid of them, but to be aware of the fact that there’s an imbalance in your home. There’s and what we’re looking for in all these cases is to find a healthy balance with with moisture in our building, right? We need a certain amount of moisture.
Yeah, you should get humidity gauges, everybody here should get digital humidity gauges and try to keep your indoor humidity between 40 and 60% with a target of 45% and what you’ll find is that we’re what’s the reality is that mold loves the same conditions we do. It just likes a little more moisture, so likes the two temperature and like to start with the way we build our buildings, at least the stuff we like Florida for the winter. Right? Exactly. No, I mean, it’s I mean, that’s it’s it’s a it’s a, it’s a dream, Florida is a dream all these buildings made of paper mache and, you know, chronic high humidity. So. So the difference between those molds is essentially the species and the degree and the kinds of conditions that are present. But in all cases, they’re indicative of the same thing, which is a moisture problem.
40:29
Thank you very much. And then this question, I’m sure will be a little bit more straightforward. And then we’ll get to the legality side, if you guys and Nicole, I really appreciate you asking this because Jason, I didn’t know you, before we moved out of the apartment, it was like a couple of weeks afterwards that we got to talk. And so I took crazy person approach. And we, we throw away stuff, and we throw away stuff that was expensive, and I just didn’t want to risk it.
And Nicole asked here, if I lived in a house with mold previously, do I really need to get rid of all my belongings? And the reason she’s asking it in that way, for anyone listening to this afterwards, or watching right now is a common thing that goes around the functional medicine space is that you should throw away the mattresses, the chairs, the clothes. So what do you think about this one? Jason?
Jason Earle 41:11
The short answer to this is, it’s a very common answer when it comes to these kinds of things, which is it depends. Okay. And that’s not the answer anybody wants to hear. But it really does. There’s so many different variables in there. So I’ll give you I’ll see if I can give you a short and sweet answer. So there’s a difference between mold spores and mold growth, okay, spores are the seeds, if you will, or seed like hearty reproductive capsules, that break free and, and go forth and prosper there, the goal is to go and colonize somewhere else. When you’ve got mold growth in a building, the spore counts are often very high, and then they settle out of the air because gravity works, and they land on your stuff. That essentially, if that happens a lot, then those items can become contaminated.
Those items can usually be cleaned. This is this, this assumes that they have not been directly wetted, or have been exposed to a prolonged too high humidity for a prolonged period of time. So a prolonged period of time when it comes to mold and moisture issues is three days. So it’s not like we’re talking weeks or months. You know, if you if you have high humidity for for more than two or three days, then you can have surface growth start to start to emerge. And when I say high humidity, I’m talking above 60%. And oftentimes, as soon as you go up to 70% 80%, that the number that the timeline shifts dramatically, it gets shorter and shorter and shorter.
The higher the immunity, the shorter the timeline. So you know, what you have to do is oftentimes, this takes some evaluation by a professional, quite frankly, but it really depends on the nature of the moisture problem caused the mold problem. So if your stuff got wet, and it stayed wet for more than three days, then you should throw it out, quite frankly, unless they’re items of very high monetary or sentimental value, which should be dealt by dealt with on a case by case basis, they can often be restored. But you have to do the math on that and see whether or not the juice is worth the squeeze.
Because oftentimes it can cost you more than the item is worth to clean it and restore it. But if you’ve been in a moldy building, and the the the items have no there’s been high spore counts, but the mold is not actually growing on the items, there’s a big difference between stuff that’s been in a moldy space versus stuff that has become moldy. And so if the stuff has just been exposed to an environment with high spore counts, those items don’t need to be thrown away, they can usually be cleaned either, you know, your clothing and pours out of like that can be sent to a dry cleaner. And I highly recommend using an organic one.
And what I mean by that is one that uses co2, not organic perchloroethylene which is you know, an orchid, technically inorganic chemical, the nasty, they’re dry things up, but you want to use a healthy dry cleaner or healthy laundry that doesn’t use fragrances by the way and and get that stuff cleaned and restored. But things like mattresses generally don’t need to be disposed of if people do it all the time, unless they were in a high humidity environment, or they were directly wet.
And so however, I would also say that most mattresses should be thrown away because most mattresses are loaded with flame retardants and and the springs which can potentially potentiate with EMF and all sorts of weird things like that. So you know, like the old school mattresses are essentially unhealthy and and RNA are an environmental exposure issue by themselves. And there’s a whole new fleet of new kinds of mattress brands out there between Casper and avocado and Lisa and all these different brands that make really beautiful healthy organic mattresses now that if you’re looking for an excuse to get a healthy one, take advantage of it, but don’t think that you need to throw it away just because it happened to be in a building that had mold.
44:54
Well, I felt bad for a second and then I felt good again because I’m like okay, well it was a normal mattress. It was like new as of like a year ago. Oh, so I felt really stupid. But so now I’m neutral on it. And I’ll go call up avocado. So thank you very much. And thanks, Nicole for the question. Great, great point, because I think that comes up a lot for people. And I took the approach, you did all jokes aside, I took the approach of really what we threw away was about two grand worth of stuff.
And is that a lot of money, it can be Yeah, I don’t want to like after two grands nothing, but to me with how bad I was feeling and how bad I felt in my life and how much I’ve spent on my health and like, I’ll take the risk and I’ll get a new damn mattress, I’ll figure it out. That’s that’s that was for me and a house if like the whole house was screwed up, and you’re talking about 10s of 1000s of dollars worth of stuff, potentially, I love what you said, get a professional involved and get them checking it out, it’s going to be way cheaper. In the long run, I’ve been throwing all that stuff out.
Jason Earle 45:41
So we’ve been there for one second, I mean, it’s really important also with anything that’s non porous, right? So that means anything is wood, metal, glass, plastic, anything, it’s got to finish on it, those things can all be cleaned. So you know, bed frames, and dressers. And these kinds of things where you get into tricky stuff is, is, you know, a furniture that’s partially upholstered. You know, and, and, of course, people get really wrapped up around things that are high value and sentimental like paintings and things like that. So by the end to clean with what so important segue to that, with Clint Clint, you know, you want to use a HEPA filter, vacuum cleaner to usually on the first pass, if you can, and that that HEPA filter on the back is to capture the particles, you don’t want to use a regular vacuum cleaner, please do not just spew it around, you actually break them up into smaller particles, and it’s DB respirable. So HEPA filter vacuum cleaner.
And, and then you use a damp wipe. And this is this is very, this is contrary to a lot of what people say, you know, you don’t need a mold killer. You don’t need any sort of, you don’t need to kill mold to remove, it’s not like you have to sneak up behind it, sniff it out before you rip it out before your naked choke. You know, it doesn’t need to be, you know, you don’t need to assassinate this stuff to get rid of it, you need to just remove it and so effectively be treated like you would dust. And if you get your if you get your belongings essentially dust free.
You have remediated them. My number one inspection technique after remediation is a white glove test. And if they pass the white glove test, then I’ll collect their samples. But if they fail the white glove test and the building’s not clean enough for me to test. And so I look at that and use the same, that same method, I bring that same simplicity to looking at individual items. If they’re, you know, you just want to get them clean, visually clean. And by the way clean. And modern America is is has been redefined as sterile. And that is not clean. Clean, by definition is free of dirt and debris. So we can rewind a little bit and use clean and also cleaned doesn’t have a scent. Clean doesn’t have a smell so normally
47:45
doesn’t smell like fine solids.
Jason Earle 47:49
If it has a scent, guess what, like clean, it’s got a residual residue that you got chemicals. And so I would argue that clean should be free of debris, dirt and debris and chemicals. That’s my definition of clean is that free of chemical residue as well. I
48:02
love listening to someone who is smart enough and knowledgeable enough about a specific domain that and I do this with certain things. But it’s very fascinating to hear you do this to podcast straight and what you’re carrying around in that head. And I’m sure you could do it for five more at least. It’s like you say something. And then you also have to add the disclaimer to it. Because if you’re actually aware of this stuff and knowledgeable about it, you know that there’s layers to it like you actually have to Well, what about this? And what about that? It’s like yes, clean it.
But this is what clean means. And by the way, if there’s a fragrance and it’s that and it’s all accurate, it’s just, again, another little masterclass for people here in terms of learnings, we appreciate that. I know we won’t have as much time to spend maybe 20 minutes on the legal side here. I’m fine with going a few minutes over if you’re okay with that in your schedule. What I want to know though is especially for the renters out there, and I can actually use my my situation as the baseline. Obviously, guys, I think this needs to be said, This is not legal advice. Jason’s not a lawyer, he’s not going to come fight your mold case for you.
But I was very surprised when I did some preliminary searching. If I had been made aware of the mold presence in my apartment earlier on, it’s kind of interesting how many rights the tenants seem to have. Now I ended up in a weird situation, because we were ending the lease anyway, and making a transition into tiny home life. So now I’m gonna be super careful about tiny home stuff with you know, just mold and all those things. With that said, though, we were ending the lease regardless, and we just found out in the same month, oh my gosh, the way I’ve been feeling or the reason I’ve been feeling this way was mold. We had no idea what was going on.
And so in the same month that we had already announced our leaving, that’s when we found the mold. Someone like me wouldn’t necessarily have much of any rights there Correct. What would start with that? Is that correct? If you’ve already left I’m basically going to leave anyway it’s October 5 I’m saying I’m leaving on the 31st are like okay, and then October 7 I find out wait Damn I have black mold in my eight track system.
Jason Earle 49:59
Well Well, you know, the rights around renting and by the way, let me precede this little segment with I’m not a lawyer. I’ve never even played one on TV. This is not legal advice. If you have legal questions, consult with a lawyer. However, I’ve seen enough of this to know sort of what works and what doesn’t work, and also what the limitations are on these things. You know, they’re your rights as, as a renter revolve around the landlord’s obligation to provide fit and habitable housing or safe and clean housing depending upon which which municipality, you read the the implied warranty of habitability. And so when you’re already leaving, you’re essentially expressing your right to live somewhere else. And so there you go, that’s your right, you have the right to leave.
And, and so that’s one of the beautiful parts about renting quite frankly, is that and it’s one of the things that people don’t really understand is that when you’re when you when you have a rental situation, the landlord is subject to legal doctrine, known as the implied warranty of habitability. And this is legal doctrine and 49 out of the 50 states. It’s not it’s not applicable in Arkansas. Well, I knew that was funny, because I just spoke to someone yesterday in Arkansas, and he knew this. And I thought that was pretty remarkable. So the the idea behind that is that, well, there’s a few different sort of, there’s a lot of nuance to it.
But if if you look at what is how do you define fit and habitable? Or how do you define safe and clean, there’s some subjectivity around that, right. But if you have a health condition that is either caused or aggravated by by mold, well, then any sort of mold growth of significance in the building is, in fact, a hazard. And so therefore, it’s not safe, certainly not clean. And I would argue that it’s not fit or habitable. And so, so in cases where this is a concern, most people who are renting are afraid to tell their landlord is a mold problem, because they think they’re gonna get kicked out or they they’re gonna get in trouble, or they don’t want to, you know, impose or you know, they want to save that complaint, they want to save a, you know, keep an arrow in their quiver for something else who knows why, but most people are very sheepish around this.
But the fact is that you’re doing your landlord a favor, if you let them know that there’s a moisture problem in the building, because again, moisture is the number one enemy of a building, right, moisture from left unchecked, will take a building down. I mean, honestly, though, it will fall apart. So and then the longer a mold problem goes, the more it grows, the more expensive it’s going to be to remove, and the more of a health risk it poses. So letting someone who’s in management or who owns the property know, of a mold problem.
First is is doing them a benefit. And so the way that the the implied warranty of habitability works is that you you notify your landlord of this issue in writing, I often recommend that people get a notebook dedicated to this. And you know, you keep your own contemporaneous notes, when you contacted them, when you let them know, you know, what you’ve observed what your symptoms are like, so that you don’t have to worry about remembering a sayings.
And by the way, they show they work really well in court, you bring a notebook in with all your contemporaneous notes. And that that that is a That’s a powerful tool in your favor. And you let them know that there’s a problem, and you let them know that you’ve got a medical condition, or that you’ve got a sensitivity or that you’ve or that you’ve got little kids in the building, which by the way, very high risk and or somebody who’s elderly, or someone who’s got a compromised immune system, by the way, all those things fall over 80%, the population falls within these categories, right between all the epidemic asthma cases, and scient, chronic sinusitis and chemical sensitivities, environmental sensitivities.
And of course, like I said, the very young and very old, you know, that’s a big chunk of our population. So if you fall within any of those categories, you’re a shoo in for being for being in the high risk population, and therefore, severe significantly, potentially affected. So anyway, you notify your landlord, and then you and then in most municipalities, and this is the other piece, you want to look up the implied warranty of habitability in your local area. And you want to make sure that you’re following the the framework or the protocol to the letter. And if you do that, then then then things operate pretty smoothly, usually.
And so usually what they’re asking for is a notification want to be told what the extent of the problem is that you’ve been able to identify. And then if there’s any sort of test results, that’s great, but they’re not necessary. If you notice any musty smells, any of the visual observations, if there’s been any specific water events, and then of course, you you they actually want you to tell them how to do which is really kind of weird. But they want you to reference the standard or the or the protocol that should be used. And so in this case, you want to reference the I C R CS 520. Mold Remediation standard. And, of course, they used to talk about the EPA guidelines, and the New York City guidelines and all that stuff. And those are kind of outdated. And so this is where it gets into some obscurity, right? Like, who has the IICRC s 520.
And they’re, you know, they’re just gonna whip that up. But that’s why we’re having this conversation, right. And so you know, you Google, if you need to Google the I google mold remediation industry standard, there’s only one of them. And so you want to make sure that they, that they, they’re notified that this is how it needs to be done. And that the property has to be subject to third party testing, before it can be moved. And then and then the other functions that you can put into place, if they’re not responsive to it and in a fixed period of time, and you can give them a week, as little as a week to take action on this. And then you can say, and if you don’t take action on this, within a week, to my satisfaction, I will pay my rent into escrow, again, every state municipality is different.
So you want to make sure that this is this is actually something you can do in your area. There are certain places that that don’t allow for this. But if you can, it’s a very powerful tool, because you pay your rent into escrow, and then they get the they get the the bank statement showing that the rent is going into someone else’s account, not theirs, and that they will get their rent when they actually get the work done. And then if you can also set an arbitrary date on when that rent will no longer be available to them. And you will, at that point affect what’s called a constructive eviction, which means that you can actually terminate your lease without any negative consequences, no hit on your credit, you can get your security deposit back and you get to keep the rent that’s been paid into escrow.
And baby, all right, that’s kind of a win win win on that one. But the landlord loses. But then they also probably won’t do that again, you know, there’s there’s that that probably won’t happen very, very often with that landlord, I think I’ve only seen that happen twice, one time twice with one landlord. In other words, like they learned pretty quickly. Yeah, happens. So this this is this is a powerful tool, but it’s called it’s called at least it’s called the implied warranty of habitability, because it’s not in the lease. It is it is the underpinning of property leases in America, again, at 49 or 50. states. And so you’ll never see it in writing. And that’s one of the reasons why nobody really knows about this. Right?
57:33
I never heard of this once. I’d never heard of this one until it was a problem for me a couple months ago. Yeah,
Jason Earle 57:38
it’s a super powerful tool. And I wrote an article about this. And I’ll drop a link here in the chat. Of
57:43
course, again, of course. I’ll put this in the public chat for everyone. That’s awesome. Yeah.
Jason Earle 57:48
And so yeah, so that is something and by the way, there are also, you know, not legal nonprofits, in every state, which help people with these kinds of things. And if you go to them and say, you know, I mean something unexpressed, that you’ve gotten knowledge around the implied warranty of habitability or curiosity around that, they can often help you navigate that, especially when it comes to the escrow and these kinds of things that really do require some some some legal guidance. And,
58:18
Jason, thank you so much. Um, listen, we do have a couple questions here. You do not have to say yes, this we’re on the hour. Are you good? Or should we hop off?
Jason Earle 58:25
I’m good. Okay,
58:26
then we’ll take a few more here. Um, thank you guys for participating with us. We don’t want to punish that by any means. Okay, we answered these two, when they work on removing the mold is mold killer enough survey, in this case as the landlord’s when they work on removing the mold? Is mold killer enough? Or do they need to replace all the
Jason Earle 58:45
drywall? Okay, so that goes back, we talked about that briefly. Mold killer is never necessary. Literally never, you never have to kill mold. I know this is this is exactly the opposite of what you learn if you go to Google or Facebook for your mold advice. And I don’t know why, I guess the mold the mold, killer product companies have done a really good job of good marketing. You know, it used to be bleach where it was I just throw bleach on it.
And then it was like, I’ll just paint some kills on it, put some paint it with this stuff. None of that stuff is is effective, it actually makes it worse. Mold colors often water base, by the way. And so So you spray it on you actually. Or you can disperse the mold first of all make it airborne because the droplets will actually cause it to disperse. And then of course, you know, because mold is a water problem you’re often adding water to water problem at best and at worst, you’re adding chemicals to an environment and whole purpose of this is to restore the property to a normal healthy condition and less chemicals is healthier. So So multicolor is never a good idea. In fact, drywall is is it has to be removed if mold is growing on drywall. The protocol is that all wallboard within two feet should be removed. And you have to really do that with with care. So that’s why professionals will will will encapsulate or I should say, contain the work area with tape and plastic and then install ventilation so that the dust they make while they’re removing it.
And also exposing potentially a lot more mold behind the wall. Right oftentimes what you see on the surface is just the tip of the iceberg. So once you cut up a wall, you can find a lot more and then they’re going to feet from what they find. But ya know, they would need to replace the drywall and any other porous building material, including insulation, which is commonly affected in this kitchen in this in those situations as well. Alright, thank
1:00:30
you. And we got one more here and astute question seems like someone’s actually it knows a lot about this and is going through it. Post mold shower remediation, and oh, sorry, they are going through post mold shower remediation, and they are reacting badly to the petroleum based slash voc tile sealant. My gosh, you can’t win one thing and you can’t win the other either. Tried washing the tile airing out the room, air scrubbers still not tolerating the shower? How do you remove the VOCs?
Jason Earle 1:00:57
Oh, gosh, I don’t know. I mean, that’s, that’s a really good question. I don’t I don’t have a good answer for that. I’m sorry.
1:01:04
Anita, I don’t know if you because I actually know her. I don’t know if you would ask this in the graduates group yet that might be something for there or definitely Ryan Monahan, I’m assuming you probably have already done that. But just in case definitely go reach out there. We’d love to help you. Alright, it looks like that’s all for the questions. Jason, thank you so much again, for hopping on. If this was someone’s first time hearing you and they didn’t hear the other podcast? Where can they find you? And I know, it’s kind of a loaded question. You’re not sitting here, you know, again, selling an air purifier or anything like that. So just to they are clear, where can they find you? And what is it that you offer people like us or consumers to use? Yes.
Jason Earle 1:01:40
So. So we have a welcome page, right? That we made, and I believe, let me just see, was it detective? Do you remember? How do you guys have that at your fingertips? I’m
1:01:52
sure I have it somewhere I can try to figure it out. And I should have
Jason Earle 1:01:56
that right here. But let me say something. So we got mold.com is is is where is where I live, of course. And and so what we have used, what we usually have is a welcome page for listeners. And let me see if I can pull that up. But what what I what I my my sort of day job when I’m when I’m not doing podcast is we help people with cost effective testing solutions. So as Evan mentioned, when we, when we were when I was first being introduced, we make a very high quality at home test kit, that, that we signed to the godmode brand and allows you to test your air in up to three different rooms without the cost or hassle associated with trying to find and hire a professional.
And there we go. There’s a there’s the link right there. And Tracy, what a godsend. There you go. And so through that link, there’s a there’s a discount available that allows and also you know it for, for the FT NS here that are interested, we have another special link, which is FDN dot got mold.com Oh, nice. And so check that out. That’s a really good place to. So that’s actually there’s a there’s an affiliate opportunity there. And that allows you can sign up there and you can get a discount yourself. And then you can offer discounts to your to your clients.
1:03:22
Why do you do this to me? God dammit, now I’m on the Alright, we’re buying crap. Another thing I get screwed from this podcast, man, I swear, no, I can’t wait. This is awesome. Thank you for setting this up.
Jason Earle 1:03:35
That is and that just went live. So we’re really, really excited about this. This partnership, you’ll see that it’s actually co branded. And so. So there, there’s a bunch of resources on that page, if you want if you scroll down, you’ll see that there’s sample reports, video for how it works, and, and other tools that can help you promote this to your audience if you feel so inclined. And then if anybody has any questions, this is a subject matter where there’s a lot of confusion.
And so we welcome these questions, you can go to gmail.com and scroll down to the bottom of the homepage and there’s a contact field there. And I see every single question that comes through. And we have legendary customer service. So we’d love to take those questions. And the other thing you can do is go to Instagram at got mold. And there’s a ask me anything there. And you can post questions there. And I like that because everybody gets the benefit of the answers.
1:04:40
Sure. Sure. Nice. I’m really quick if you don’t mind Jason Maria asked if they’d like to know if our program if FDN teaches us a teaches them how to treat or educate mold illness clients. So Maria in the main course we’re focusing on a lot of the foundational stuff that would not be necessarily including mold Now Jason and Reed have been talking, maybe that’s a little premature. But there might be something cool in the future. As of this moment, right now, that’s not something we’re teaching in the main course. What we do have on the graduate side is extensive extra webinars for this extensive training, we have a bunch of practitioners that can help out.
But just to be clear, you would basically have to get through the main program first before getting those additional resources. Totally worth it once it’s there. But I just don’t want you to think that’s going to be an overnight thing. It takes on average about eight and a half months for people to graduate. So you’d be looking at about eight months before you could benefit fully from the graduate side of this. So I think that is all for today. I’ll share the Instagram link right up there. And if you’re listening on audio, obviously I’d have this in the show notes for you guys. But Jason, thank you so much for coming on for round two, my friend. You are very impressive with how much you can store up there. Especially about such specific topics like mold. I love listening to you. Thanks.
Jason Earle 1:05:53
I appreciate it. It’s really good.
